Too much snare in overheads.

[shopeesquire]

I'm trying to use my overheads for mostly cymbals and theres more snare than cymbala. I have two condensors and too many cymbals. tips?

[brandondrury]

Good! This means you are in good shape (especially if you are doing radio music).

If I'm not questioning whether I have too much snare in my overheads, there probably isn't enough snare in the overheads.

The solution is a limiter. That'll take care of everything. The tricky part is how you set the release time.

The sound of too much snare in snare in the overheads being compressed/limited is THE sound of radio music for the past 30 years or so.

Brandon

[garageband]

I often wish I had this problem. What mics, specifically?

[shopeesquire]

We have a pair of peavey 408 pencil condensers.

[garageband]

I would try two things.
Don't point the mics down at the drums, point them across to the opposite side. Cymbals and kick tend to be less directional, for different reasons. And your not going to get much in the way of toms, anyhow. Actually notch EQ out the snare from the OH mix. Sweep through and find it (around 2.5k) and notch it with about -3dB at a medium-to-narrow Q.

The fewer gyrations you have to make the better.

[willieturnip]

Yeah, I would much prefer this "problem" than not having enough snare.

[shopeesquire]

We've been doing the pointed accross trick. I've got at a good point where the snare adds to the sound but isn't overpowering the cymbals. I just wanted to be able to have control of the mix.

[garageband]

EQ will give you tons of control. Your mics or room probably has an uncomfortable peak where the snare is. EQ, the problem solver, to the rescue.

[shopeesquire]

Yeah, some extra highs are really bringing out the cymbals! Who woulda thunk it.

I pretty much overlooked that. I'm pretty pleased with the mix i'm getting with this.

Any tips on getting a "boomier" floor tom? Its sounding an awful lot like a wet bag. I think its more of the tom than any micing or mixing.

[brandondrury]

EQ will give you tons of control. Your mics or room probably has an uncomfortable peak where the snare is. EQ, the problem solver, to the rescue.

There was a day when I was afraid of using EQ "globally". In other words, I thought that cutting a specific frequency to pull a snare back a bit would cause "damage" to the rest of the track. This is a load of crap. There are all sorts of instances where you can get away with cutting / boost frequencies to control individual levels.

There is a Bob Katz video where he's mastering a tune suffering from one-note bass. Just a "B" note leaps out in a very unflattering way. An otherwise great mix is having major problems because of it. He simply found that B was whatever frequency on some chart he had. (I want to say it was 127Hz). He used a super narrow Q and cut 127Hz by 4dB. It totally solved the problem. I would have expected making a 4dB cut during mastering to be disastrous to the other instruments. Granted, that cut is effecting the other instruments, but in the video I certainly didn't notice any negative effects. The postive effects were outrageous.

Brandon